Yes, yes, I know. Let’s just get on with it, shall we?
It’s a maze. In first person.
It came in sixth place in the 1K category of the 2008 Minigame Competition, so I don’t really want to slag it off. So I’m just going to stop right here.
Huh. It’s the same as Amaz1ng, only about a million times slower, with no full screen view, and no map screen.
I suppose it was twenty-five years before Amaz1ng, so I don’t really want to slag it off. I’ll just leave this one here.
So, there’s this sort of non-maze. There are holes in the walls that move, and you have to wait for them to get around the screen.
I suppose it was only 1986, so… wait, hang on. 1986 was the year of Gauntlet and Outrun. There’s no excuses for tosh like this. Ugh. Now I remember why I’ve spent the last six months playing programming on my 360 – this long, long string of terrible, terrible games.
So you play the paintbrush. Not the brightly flashing thing that I spent my entire first game trying to control, no – the dull paintbrush way over there in the corner. You have to get the paint and then colour in every square in the maze.
Now while I’ll freely admit that it would be churlish to complain that I could be playing Red Faction: Guerrilla
Nul points.
Amazement – Grupo de Trabajo, 1986
As gamers go, I’m pretty old. As Spectrum users go, though, I’m one of the youngsters. I didn’t get my first Speccy until ’87, and by that time games were being produced mostly by real companies. Folks like Hewson,and Ocean, and US Gold. Professional operations that gave you a product you just bunged in the tape deck and waited for.
Apparently the cut-off for that era was the year I got my Speccy, since this game expects me to LOAD “” CODE and start the game with a RANDOMIZE USR call.
Sadly I don’t know what address the game starts at, so I can’t play it. I’m sure you can imagine exactly how disappointed I am.
Amazing! – Phipps Associates, 1982
It’s a type-in program that makes a maze. (Very, very slowly.) It’s not even a game. I feel robbed, not just by Phipps Associates, for bundling this with their Pocket Book Games compilation, but also by World of Spectrum, for claiming that this is a game when it is clearly not.
On the other hand, it’s quite a cool random maze generator and I can probably nick the code for something I’ll try to sell to 360 users, so it’s not all bad. Ahem.
The Amazing Rocketeer – John Fotou, 2007
Oh no, look at that. 2007? It’s going to be a CGC entry, and I’m going to have suffered another day full of terrible games. Well, let’s hurry up and get it out of the way, eh?
Huh. Well, that’s surprising – it’s actually quite nice to look at. Apparently I’m supposed to fly this little robot geezer around and collect some items, in some sort of brightly-coloured scrolling Jet Set Willy-alike.
Sadly, it doesn’t get any better than the graphics. It’s just too bloody hard! There’s flames all over the floor, and the ‘safe’ spots are slopes that guide you right into any flames that you missed while ‘flying’! I don’t know, maybe it’s spending the last six months playing 360 games. Maybe my gaming skills have been degraded by quick-save-quick-load dumbed-down-for-the-kids consoles.
On the other hand, I also can’t get the game to restart after dying, so maybe something else is wrong. I don’t think it’s me.
So, another bunch of games out of the way, and we’re back on the path towards reviewing every Spectrum game ever. Next time I’ll be looking at all things (beginning with) American. Stay tuned!
Yay!
Amazement – quite amazingly does actually auto-run if you LOAD “” CODE.
I tried it, it’s all in Spanish, a line of space invader-type graphics come down the screen, and you get about three seconds to figure out what the controls are, before being told (given my basic grasp of working out what foreign text says without having any knowledge of the language) something about a helicopter and the mission being aborted.
I give it a score of 0, which incidentally is the score the game gave me.
Huh. That’s odd. I got a loading screen, and then dumped back to BASIC. Perhaps I should give it another try, just for the sake of completeness.
“?????????”